I see Pete has flagged this between me starting the draft and getting home but I’ll add my take regardless. Several weeks back I noted Gerry Adams would find it no problem to become a candidate in Louth but may find it more difficult to become an elector. In order to be able to vote at an election or referendum, a person’s name must be entered on the register of electors for the locality in which the elector ordinarily resides. …
The FT’s editorial yesterday second leading article was entitled In Praise of NAMA. Their logic being that NAMA was the first element in what it proposes as a necessary three part process, that is to force the banks must come clean on their losses. But that it failed to take the second and third steps, ie make a political decision about who should carry those losses and to develop ‘the legal, technical and political capacity’ to impose those losses: Nama …
Now that the first blast of dust has settled in the debate on the Irish budget, ERSI analysts have asked – Is It Fair? The short answer is, who cares about fairness when ( nearly) everyone is feeling pain? The more complex one is that it all depends on from where you’re looking at it. Relative fairness may have been achieved better than a Sinn Fein platform rant would have you believe. But absolute fairness becomes harder to claim lower down the …
The Irish News today reports comments from the Irish Labour Party’s transport spokesman, Joe Costello, TD, which cast doubt on the proposed £850million upgrade of the A5 between Londonderry and Aughnacloy. From the Irish News report …Mr Costello claimed that while it was “fine to make commitments in the middle of the Celtic Tiger years”, the southern state could no longer afford “grandiose schemes”. “At the present time, we are experiencing savage cutbacks in education, health and social welfare. Giving Northern …
We started with the PISA report on education standards throughout the world. The Pisa assessments of 15-year-olds show Wales falling further behind since the 2006 tests. Wales teenagers ranked below average, alongside the Czech Republic, in reading. Leighton Andrews called the results “unacceptable” and said everyone involved should be “alarmed”. Wales again ranked lowest of the UK countries and is now cast adrift from England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Out of 67 countries taking part, Wales was ranked 38th for …
As the Irish Times notes, EU economics and monetary affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn has joined the head of the IMF in calling for “well coordinated action to safeguard stability in the euro area”. From the Irish Times Mr Rehn told the conference [in Athens] that the euro area was determined to agree thorough reform to set up a new system of economic governance. “We will not stop until we have accomplished our mission. We are now in the decade of fundamental reforms,” …
This week’s Trinity News*, the student newspaper at Trinity College Dublin, carries a stark headline: MOST STUDENTS WILL EMIGRATE. It is followed by three bullet points detailing the results of an online poll of TCD students by the newspaper: 85% of TCD students plan to emigrate Lecturers advising students to leave Unemployment rate has tripled The old familiar spectre of emigration has been ever more present in Ireland in the past year, as the country continues to reel from the …
In the Belfast Telegraph Sinn Féin MLA Mitchel McLaughlin responds to Ed Curran’s question on the cost of a united Ireland with some hollow nationalist rhetoric, and indulges in some fantasy economics. An analysis of the expenditure by ‘regions’ along with a series of estimates of the revenues from the regions by Oxford Economics shines some light on the actual subvention by the British Exchequer. The main findings demonstrate that total ‘identifiable expenditure’ for the North was £14.1bn in 2004/05. This is …
I can’t vouch for the detail of this, but Michael is usually pretty reliable with figures… Budget 2011 provides considerable tax breaks for those on very high non-wage incomes. If you happen to be a millionaire you are nearly 6 percent better off with Fianna Fail’s budget. How does this occur? This is how Deloitte breaks down the millionaire’s budget. They will pay €11,936 more on income tax and PRSI. However, under the Universal Social Charge, they pay €34,931 less …
Yesterday it was the turn of hundreds of school children demonstrating outside Parliament to save their playing fields and delivering a petition signed by 500,000″ organised by 17 year old Debbie Foote from Grantham , Lincs.” Last Saturday, TopShop at Oxford Circus, the shopping mecca for metro youth, was forced to close as hundreds protested against Philip Green’s tax avoidance. The organiser if you can call it that, was Ununcut – ( another potential disaster area for the Today programme’s …
Quote from twitter: ‘Superman has Pearse Doherty pyjamas’
While a furious Irish taxpayer [on the Clontarf dart] discovers just how bad it’s going to be, RTÉ notes that EU finance ministers have formally approved the €85billion bail-out for Ireland. While bond investors still appear unconvinced that the politicians have a clear strategy to restore the euro’s fortunes, there is growing political division over the best solution. Belgium, which holds the EU presidency, and which has seen its own bond yields increase, wants the €750bn fund increased. Luxembourg and Italy …
Mark Reckless is Tory MP for Rochester and Strood. He’s also the grandson of one Henry McDevitt, who briefly sat as a Fianna Fail TD for the now defunct Donegal East constituency. It seems Mr Reckless has taken it upon himself to commission a Red C poll on the question of whether the good folk of the Irish Republic would like to return to the calmer waters of the sterling zone. (H/T Gawain) He has hosted the detailed report on …
Nick Cohen with a pithy sign off on the banking crisis: Margaret Thatcher had the annoying ability to produce quotes that even her opponents had to admire. “The trouble with socialism,” she said, as she began the west’s experiment with reckless banking, “is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” We have learned the hard way that it is the trouble with financial capitalism too. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the …
IF this contrite statement is anything to go by, DUP Sports Minster Nelson McCausland must have hauled Sport NI chief executive Eamonn McCartan over the coals for listing off on TV reasons why we weren’t attracting Olympic interest. McCartan told the BBC that no Olympic teams had committed to train here for the 2012 Games due to our violent image, the threat from dissidents, geographical location, travel costs and access to Olympics venues. His despondent forecast neatly echoes, er, fellow …
That’s alternative budgets, plural. As in published separately. RTÉ has the details. But the iol report notes the differences between the two parties’ proposals and adds, for the benefit of more excitable commenters, [Labour Party leader] Eamon Gilmore ruled out a new Government of the left, saying he wouldn’t go into coalition with Sinn Féin. This would mean a deal with Fine Gael and major compromises on both sides is the only way. Adds The Irish Economy blog points to Labour’s alternative budget …
So Scotland enacts the Calman report (aka the Scotland Bill), that drops in . That it is brought in by a Conservative (not all of whom are happy campers, btw) Lib Dem coalition that fought tooth and nail over a political generation (or more) against, is an irony not lost on Peter Curran, who notes John Curtice’s remarks: …their [the SNP] victory in 2007 forced the Labour Party in particular to re-think its attitude towards devolution, to work together with …
The new False Economy website (building on the success of The Other Taxpayers’ Alliance and the MyDavidCameron sites) marks something of a change-up for the left, not least because it it something of a tribute to the strategic successes of the right over recent years. Watching the student protests throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, alongside the GPO rally in Dublin last Saturday, it’s hard to see what the political utility of street-protest really is. We may have an answer …
OK the UK Goverment have: 1) Scrapped the Severn Barrage (£30bn.) 2) Scrapped St Athan’s Defence Academy (£14bn) 3) Delayed Great Western Electrification in Wales (£1bn) 4) Closed Newport Passport Office…300 jobs gone. 5) Cut S4C funding by £20m p.a. We, on the other hand, have decided to subsidise English Universities by up to £110m p.a.. We are a kind and appreciative nation I know…..but this can’t be sensible. DewiWelsh Nationalist. Rugby Fan. Know a bit about History and Railways…
So what was PIcamp all about? Well the idea behind is pretty straightforward. It’s based on the understanding that meaningful change happens iteratively, in small steps and not through large scale revolutions. We began this year’s events in Edinburgh, because one of the things that Scotland and Northern Ireland share is a lack of capacity with parties and government to come up with new ideas to deal with new problems. The internet may not be able supply the answers to …
